Christie’s has posted a sales tally of $5.4 billion for 2016, a 27% decline from a year prior, signaling the art market’s continued slump, and nearly matching Sotheby’s 30% drop in sales. (more…)
As the waterline of Utah’s Great Salt Lake gradually recedes, some are questioning what impact a dried lake could have on Robert Smithson’s famed Spiral Jetty, a work intended to function in concert with changing tide levels. “We don’t anticipate water back to the lake. We don’t anticipate more precipitation in the future. We anticipate that this drought is a permanent fixture and is likely going to get worse,” says Bonnie Baxter of the Great Salt Lake Institute. “And that’s based on data.” (more…)
Katharina Grosse, Untitled (2016), via Art Observed
Opening her first exhibition with Gagosian since announcing her representation by the gallery last year, Katharina Grosse has brought a swirling, nuanced body of new works to the gallery’s 24th Street location in Chelsea this month, documenting her enigmatic approach to the painted canvas through a variety of approaches and forms. Allowing varied layers and lines to intersect, overlap and combine, the artist’s gestural techniques, in conversation with her use of various technologies in the rendering of the canvas, create densely packed spaces of visual information.
Anselm Kiefer, Walhalla (1992 – 2016), via White Cube
Walhalla, Anselm Kiefer’s latest exhibition at White Cube Gallery in Bermondsey, is a dark, thrilling, and sinister rendering of war and destruction. The show’s title, drawn from Norse mythology, and referring to the final resting place of slain heroes as they were received by King Odin, is scribbled in charcoal above the entrance. “Walhalla” or “final place of rest” is also the title of a neoclassical hall commissioned by Bavaria’s King Ludwig I in 1842, built to honor men of great repute. Kiefer, for his part, honors not just historical figures, but found objects in tandem, marrying unreality with the show’s surreal juxtapositions: a bed sinks under the weight of a winged boulder; a lightening bolt strikes a bullet-hold wheelchair; a spiral staircase, adorned with rusted dresses, leads to an ambiguous destination. Notions of mythology and reality are interwoven to provide an intriguing, albeit challenging, spectacle to behold. (more…)
Sotheby’s has filed a lawsuit against dealer Mark Weiss and collector David Kowitz, alleging that a Frans Hals painting the pair sold through the auction house is a fake. “The painting was with the experts Mr. Weiss had instructed for a four-month period and was subject to extensive testing by them,” Sotheby’s said on Tuesday. “Mr. Weiss later suggested that additional tests be conducted by a new group of conservators, but Sotheby’s concluded that none of these further tests would change its conclusion.” (more…)
Bendor Grosvenor has a piece in the Wall Street Journal this week, raising concerns over the health of the British art market in the wake of the Brexit vote. “For now, Britain’s art market is safe,” he writes. “A weak pound has led to a small boom in London’s art auctions. And through a combination of tradition, solid British law and local expertise, the U.K.’s art-market leadership is difficult to challenge. But the real fear among U.K. art dealers and auctioneers is of a gradual decline in competitiveness.” (more…)
Tracey Emin is one of several benefactors behind a new scholarship at Bard College Berlin that aims to help those fleeing violence in Syria. “I want to help and try to make things better, but in a way in which I know I can. If just one student makes it through that course and does something great with their life, for me it’s all been worth it,” she says. “I love being an artist, I love my work and when I see the atrocities taking place in this world I realize how lucky I am.” (more…)
Yayoi Kusama is profiled in the Wall Street Journal this week, as the artist opens a series of major exhibitions, including her exhibition of Infinity Room works at the Hirshhorn opening later this month. “In my mirror rooms, you see yourself as an individual reflected in an expansive space,” she says. “But they also give you the sensation of cloistering yourself in another world.” (more…)
NADA New York has announced that half of its ticket sales will go to benefit the ACLU this year. “As it’s NADA’s mission to create an open flow of information, support, and collaboration, we must take advantage of opportunities to rally the resources of this community,” says Elyse Derosia, co-owner of New York’s Bodega Gallery and president of NADA’s board of directors. “The diversity of New York is what makes it the city that it is, and the art capital that it is, and we’re better because of it. (more…)
A £30 million bid by London’s National Gallery to prevent the export of Jacopo Pontormo’s Portrait of a Young Man in a Red Cap (1530) has been rejected following the drop in value of the pound in the past months. “While it’s not possible to save every object, the system is designed to strike the right balance between protecting our national cultural heritage and individual property rights,” says a spokeswoman for the Department of Culture, Media and Sport. (more…)
Christo is interviewed in The Guardian this week, discussing his process alongside partner Jean-Claude for creating his iconic Wrapped Reichstag work. “In the course of 24 years, we worked with six different presidents of the Bundestag and were refused three times. I was so depressed, I was ready to give up,” he says. “Then finally, in 1994, it went to a vote and we won.” (more…)
The 2017 Venice Biennale has announced its list of 120 participating artists for this year’s edition of the event, opening May 13th. “The role, the voice, and the responsibility of the artist are more crucial than ever before within the framework of contemporary debates,” says curator Christine Macel. “It is in and through these individual initiatives that the world of tomorrow takes shape, which though surely uncertain, is often best intuited by artists than others.” (more…)
The nominees have been announced for the 2017 edition of the Prix Marcel Duchamp, France’s most prominent contemporary art award. This year’s nominees are Maja Bajevic, Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, Charlotte Moth and Vittorio Santoro. (more…)
Armory Week’s popular Spring/Break art exhibition is moving locations this year to a Times Square office building, where it will take up two full floors. “We’re interested in engaging iconic, atypical environments where contemporary art is often absent,” co-founder, Ambre Kelly said in a statement. “In past years this included the former Catholic school of one of the oldest cathedrals in Manhattan, then the decommissioned postal inspection offices of one of the city’s largest post offices. Our new space is an expansion of this—occupying the 12th largest commercial building in Manhattan, and with it, a new space and seat of American culture to occupy.” (more…)
The Guardian spotlights the ongoing work the The Guerilla Girls, and broader efforts in the art world to make a priority of presenting female artists. The Tate Modern’s dynamic decision to devote half of its new exhibition space at the Switch House to female artists is spotlighted in particular. “Very simply, we have made a commitment to rethinking our collection, how we build it and the choices we make,” says director Frances Morris. “And I think what we did with Switch House was in a way very simple. We didn’t dress it up as a strategy or positive discrimination – it was just great work by women and an attempt to redress the gender balance. Simple as that. And a lot of my peers said: ‘What a relief.’” (more…)
Paul Gauguin’s Te Fare (La maison) will lead Christie’s Impressionist and Modern Evening Sale this March in London, carrying a £12 million estimate. “Gauguin has increasingly simplified and monumentalized the landscape, transcending reality by turning the natural world into a mystic vision of color, line and form,” a statement reads. (more…)
Dealer Yves Bouvier is profiled in Bloomberg this week, as he reflects on the past two years of court cases against Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev, and his indefinite plans for the future. “When something like this happens in your life, your outlook on life and on people changes, as do your priorities,” Bouvier said in an interview. “As to the future, I don’t know what I’m going to do.” (more…)
Richard Serra, NJ-2 (2016), via Art Observed
Richard Serra’s works are nothing if not an experience; curving, twisting forms that wind the viewer through space, while taking an active hand on shaping the space itself. Throughout the artist’s career, he has continued to create works that challenge conventional understanding of form, and re-conceptualize notions of gravity in play with his objects. Working within this familiar domain, Serra is currently presenting three unique, large-scale steel sculptures at Gagosian Britannia Street, London. On view through March 10th, 2017 his new works highlight his mastery of material, and his unique ability to continually pursue a sense of creative vitality. In some sense, his works here: NJ-2 (previously on view in New York), Rounds: Equal Weight, Unequal Measure, and Rotate, exist as portals of some sort, gateways into a repositioned experience of space, and the act of viewing work within a given series of physical constraints. (more…)
Lucio Fontana, Concetto Spaziale, Attesa (1964-1965), via Cardi Gallery
The return of Mexico City’s increasingly vital art week this February signals the first wave of 2017’s major fair events, as much of the world’s contemporary art world converges on the sprawling Mexican capital. Centered around the large-scale Zona Maco fair and its smaller, younger sister fair Material at the Expo Reforma, the week offers a wide range of events and openings accompanying the market-focused proceedings. (more…)
Breaking into Paris’s Museum of Modern Art and stealing over $112 million in paintings was “one of my easiest and biggest heists,” according to Vjeran Tomic, whose outline of his theft points to a poorly maintained museum security system. (more…)
The New York Times looks at the recent health of The Met, and its reported $40 million budget deficit that has the institution struggling to decide on its next steps. “One benefit from all this: It’s brought the departments together with the administration to sit down at a common table, and that’s something,” says Keith Christiansen, the chairman of the Met’s European paintings department. “Now what do we do to move forward and make sure the mission of the museum is not compromised?” (more…)
The Museum of Modern Art has made its subtle commentary on the current attempts by Donald Trump to issue an immigration ban, hanging works by artists from the affected nations in its fifth-floor permanent-collection galleries. (more…)
Mark Leckey, The Universal Addressability of Dumb Things (2013), via Art Observed
British artist Mark Leckey has brought a dense, timely exhibition to bear on the second and third floors of MoMA PS1 this month, as the artist’s first comprehensive U.S. survey brings a range of perspectives on the pace and content of a digitized life. Questioning and playfully subverting the varied symbolic systems and technological structures that facilitate the landscape of modern life, Leckey’s exhibition is a fitting opening note of 2017, challenging hierarchies of power and image-making in a time when the consistency and reliability of information has become an increasingly troubled subject.
Mark Leckey, GreenScreenRefrigerator (2008-2016), via Art Observed
Henry Moore, Warrior with Shield (1953—1954), all images courtesy Hauser & Wirth
Taking a historically nuanced approach towards the vastly influential career of British sculptor Henry Moore, Hauser & Wirth is currently presenting an exhibition of early works on paper by the artist. Exploring the artist’s graphic practice in the years directly following the end of WWII, the exhibition traces Moore’s ongoing engagement with the world of literature, and his engagement with the broader artistic spheres as he continued to hone and develop his practice. Organized by the Henry Moore Foundation and curated by the artist’s daughter, Mary, the exhibition traces Moore’s impressive creative spirit, and the ever-shifting craft of an artist continuing to work through wartime. (more…)